


panem et circenses.

by Morganna



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: I'm sorry I didn't want them to die but that's just how it went, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-07 13:50:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18411926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morganna/pseuds/Morganna
Summary: Jim watched McCoy die first.In the end, he watched them all die.Four hundred people aboard the Enterprise, and each and every one of their deaths was behind his eyelids, on his shoulders.He’d ground his wrists raw into the handcuffs, blood flaked on his skin. Not just his. The Proconsul had taken to forcing him down on his knees in the blood of his crew after every match. There’d been many.





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadySilverbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySilverbird/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This started out as a "what-if" scenario after watching Bread and Circuses.  
> It turned out a lot longer than planned, as these things do.
> 
> In the end, I turned it into a gift for a friend once I realized it was going to be an actual thing.  
> Happy birthday, friend <3
> 
> Sorry for any characters acting OOC. I tried to keep them in character as much as possible, but the longer a fanfiction gets, the more likely it is I'm going to screw things up.
> 
> Disclaimed: Star Trek and characters are not mine.
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

 

* * *

Jim watched McCoy die first.  
  
In the end, he watched them all die.  
  
Four hundred people aboard the _Enterprise_ , and each and every one of their deaths was behind his eyelids, on his shoulders.  
  
He’d ground his wrists raw into the handcuffs, blood flaked on his skin. Not just his. The Proconsul had taken to forcing him down on his knees in the blood of his crew after every match. There’d been many.  
  
First Chekov.  
  
Then Morrison.  
  
Ling.  
  
White.  
  
Erikson.  
  
Wilks.  
  
Marten.  
  
The list felt endless.  
  
The guilt and souls on his shoulders bent him forward more than the greasy, meaty hand of the Proconsul. He heard their whispers—their condemnations—far louder than Claudius’ taunting words. Jim had long since stopped listening to the man—there was no need. What good would it do him?  
  
He’d tried so hard to keep his crew safe.  
  
He’d failed.  
  
Hands dug into his skin as guards drew him to his feet. Jim met the Proconsul’s amused, faux empathetic gaze, and felt the age-old rebellious burn in his gut. The need to act, to out smart, out wit, and out maneuver as he’d always done. To save those left and run right to the Federation—or get to the _Enterprise_ and wipe the whole damn planet off the map.  
  
Claudius smiled.  
  
Jim spit.  
  
A guard cracked him across the face.  
  
His knees went out.  
  
The Proconsul grunted as he wiped the fluid away on a handkerchief and lead the way to the room they’d prepared. Once Claudius had realized the sheer amount of torture it gave Jim to languish in comfort, he’d had a suite of rooms locked down.  
They threw him in and he landed hard on his bound hands. Warm fingers pressed into his back, then helped him to his feet.  
  
“Jim,” Claudis sing-songed his name. When Jim looked at him, he held up the handkerchief. “The next fight will be full color, a prime spot. And your little _friend_ —” the word was spat with so much implication, Jim blood boiled like a thousand suns shoved into his veins “—is next.”  
  
The door slammed and Spock keyed the cuffs open, freeing Jim’s sore hands.  
  
But Jim didn’t move. Couldn’t. Fear unballed in his stomach and spread through his system in a poison that moved fast and killed slow.  
  
Spock was all he had left. His last life line. Once Spock was gone Jim would careen into space, untethered.  
  
They’d make him fight and Jim day dreamed about falling onto his sword.  
  
Why give them the satisfaction they truly craved in the violence of clashing sword when they’d taken everything from him?  
“I’m not dead yet, Captain,” came the somber, quiet voice of his second-in-command.  
  
Captain, captain, captain. He wasn’t captain of anything anymore, except his own damn sorrows, regret, and guilt.  
  
Or, he was captain of a dead ship, orbiting a planet it should have ruined.  
  
Spock, gentle and patient, lead him to the bathroom to change his clothes and wash away the blood.  
  
Then Jim was in a chair and there was food.  
  
There was nothing between one thing and the other, only the heat of Spock’s fingers on his bruised shoulders and the feel of him as he guided Jim through the motions.  
  
Did Spock know? Had Jim’s desperate fear begun to broadcast his emotions?  
  
They’d been shipmates for what felt like lifetimes but Jim’s love was a fragile, forever newly-hatched thing he’d tried so hard to hide and deny long before they’d begun to orbit Magna Roma. He’d stunted its growth and tried to starve it dead.  
  
But there was nothing that could kill it.  
  
Not with Spock helping Jim to his feet after another of their crew died before his eyes.  
  
Not with him washing the blood and tending to the wounds, and changing Jim’s clothes.  
  
Not with him feeding Jim as Jim stared at the plate because there was no hint of an appetite.  
  
With Spock, Jim dutifully ate every piece that the alien put in front of him.  
  
Between one bite and the next, Jim’s anger flared and he snapped his head up.  
  
Anger tasted of apples, the hint of pears, and a drop of wine.  
  
Spock only blinked.  
  
“We have to get out of here,” he whispered.  
  
The guards couldn’t hear him through the heavy doors. They didn’t have to.  
  
The anger turned into molten lava in Jim’s bones even as the memories assaulted. His first two—and so far only—attemps had killed members of his crew.  
  
Sulu in the first.  
  
Winters the second.  
  
Just like with the others, Jim had watched them personally die. Their blood on his face, in his mouth, on his knees as he wanted to weep but couldn’t. The hollowed out part of him was dry as a desert, but not without feeling.  
Spock’s lips pressed together. “That is...an illogical course of action, Captain.”  
  
“I’m not a captain!” He slammed his hand down and shivered at the intensity of his own feelings. He vascillated between numb horror and the burning, churning need of guilt and rebellion and love. “Spock, look at me. I’m no more a captain than—” But the words didn’t come.  
  
Not in the face of Spock’s steeled eyes and squared jaw.  
  
A jaw Jim lingered to run his fingers over and trail his lips in their wake.  
  
A jaw he wanted open only in moans and whimpers and the debauched sound of his name.  
  
“Captain,” Spock said, and the way he said it made Jim shiver. Even as a dying man, Spock was a force. He showed none of the emotions Jim knew he felt—Vulcan or human, Spock was as feeling a creature as Jim or any of the other humans that’d been aboard the _Enterprise_. Certainly a more feeling creature then the people of Magna Roma.  
  
Jim just had shit-all control over those emotions.  
  
Sometimes he envied Spock. Especially now.  
  
“Jim.” Spock’s eyes softened. Not perceptively. If Jim didn’t know every one of the Vulcan’s micro-expression, he’d have missed it. “You are, and will always be, captain of the _Enterprise_.” Spock’s warm hand settled on his shoulder. Instead of adding weight, it lightened him. The whispers of his ghosts settled into a dull drone. “Do not ever let them take that from you.”  
  
The pieces of Jim, already broken, ground themselves into fine powder. “After you…” He couldn’t even say it. Jim’s voice came out rough, and his next words came on the wings of jagged glass. “There’ll be nothing left.”

* * *

 


	2. ii.

* * *

  
Spock’s only reaction was to make Jim finish his food.  
  
Jim did, mostly so Spock would stop fixating on it.  
  
Of course, once that was over, Spock fixated on something else.  
  
Bed time. But Jim didn’t want to sleep. Not with Spock’s life on the line.  
  
He’d failed all the others. Failing Spock was out of the question.  
  
“Spock! Please!” Jim stood in the middle of the room ready to pull his hair out. “I’m not—I can’t—”  
  
Spock sighed. “Captain, please,” he said, parroting Jim’s outburst while managing not to sound like a spoiled little child. A desperate, broken, spoiled little child. “You need your rest.”  
“No. I need to get us out of here.”  
  
Jim remembered what he’d said...months ago. Was it months? By God. It felt both like only days since they’d landed with Spock and McCoy sniping at one another, and lifetimes that he’d been stuck watching his crew die one by one.  
  
_My world, Proconsul, is my vessel, my oath, my crew._  
  
Now the only things he had left was a dead ship and a few crew members languishing in a dungeon while he slept on a thousand count silk sheets.  
  
Jim flew the distance between them and took Spock by the shirt.  
  
Desperation urged him into recklessness. Jim did nothing more than stand there, hands in fists around the rough material of Spock’s gray slave uniform, and chest heaving as he fought against all his own selfish needs.  
When Spock’s lips descended on his, Jim jumped.  
  
Then melted. He wrapped his arm around Spock and pressed them together, tilted his head, opened his mouth under the relentless onslaught of the Vulcan’s mouth.  
  
And Spock was relentless.  
  
His lips were hot and sweet, his tongue demanding as he licked into Jim’s mouth and—  
  
Then he was gone.  
  
The whole of him several steps away and Jim left empty, gasping, wanting. Hollowed out with need.  
  
Spock’s cheeks and the tips of his ears were deliciously flush dark green, and he looked past Jim instead of meeting his gaze. “Call it,” he said, voice husky in the aftermath, “a dying man’s last wish, Captain.”  
  
“No.” Jim stalked forward, took Spock’s jaw in hand, made him look so that their eyes met. “We are getting out of here, Mr. Spock,” he said quietly, firecely. He held Spock’s jaw so tight he was almost afraid to let go and see the bruises.  
  
“How, Captain?” The color had left him in his curiosity, and he raised one perfect brow.  
  
Jim looked around. They had no real weapons. Not even knives of a sort.  
  
He hefted a wine decanter in hand and let the liquid slosh as he bounced it.  
  
Maybe, instead of cutting how own throat, he’d cut someone else’s.  
  
Thoughts ran circles in his head. They were going to try to get out no matter what. If Claudis was going to order Spock’s death—and Jim had known it’d come eventually, no matter what he told himself—then Jim was going to rebel. He was going to fight. He’d fought and struggled to save McCoy, and Sulu, and Chekov, and Winters, and Ling, and so many others. Spock would be no exception.  
  
Neither of them would go quietly into any sort of night, if Jim had something to say about it.  
  
And thank God, he did.  
  
The wine stopped sloshing. Jim became very still as he met Spock’s eyes again.  
  
“I don’t know,” he said eventually, giving Spock his rogue-ish grin.  
  
Spock only frowned as he took the wine decanter and set it aside. “Jim, I don’t want to spend my last hours hatching a plan to get you killed—”  
  
“I’m going die anyway, Spock!” Jim ran a hand over his face, pressed fingers against the bridge of his nose. “Isn’t that what I’ve been doing all along?”  
  
His first officer was so quiet for so long, Jim almost thought he’d disappeared into smoke. It wouldn’t really surprise Jim, he wasn’t even sure what he was saying was real. It all felt like a dream—a nightmare that they were even locked on Magna Roma and his officers…his crew were being picked off every day.  
  
Spock looked around, then motioned in the direction of the hole they’d started to dig. It’d understandably petered out when Claudius had stopped giving them utensils to eat with at all. Spock had logically concluded Claudius knew of the hole; Jim had stubbornly insisted Claudius had no way to know about it, hidden as it was under a wall hanging with the dirt under their bed.  
  
It wasn’t a big hole. More like a vague oval-shape they’d barely begun to hollow into.  
  
Jim tilted his head.  
  
Spock dragged him over to it and pulled back the curtain.  
  
Eyebrows raised, Jim bit him lip to resist the urge to whistle.  
  
While Jim was suffering and being overall useless, Spock had been busy. Their vague oval-shape was now an actual tunnel.  
  
“So…you weren’t going to tell me about this?” Jim asked, trying to go for light-hearted mirth, but the words ground themselves out on the tips of rage.  
  
Spock didn’t look impressed at all as he shrugged one thin shoulder. “It isn’t finished.”  
  
“How far does it go, Spock?” He almost shook him. Almost kissed him. Almost wept.  
  
“It goes for some distance, Captain,” he said, as if that wasn’t an amazing feat.  
  
Jim reached for Spock, gripped his shoulder and drew him so their foreheads touched. “You’ve been working on this while I—”  
  
“While you were forced to watch our crew die?” said Spock, eyes so dark they were almost black. “Yes.”  
  
He didn’t know who moved first—for all Jim did know, it was both of them—but suddenly their lips were touching again. Spock’s hands were on his face, angling his head; and Jim’s hands pressed into Spock’s shoulder blades, fingers dug into the skin as if he could merge them given half a chance.  
  
Spock broke free first, and Jim chased after.  
  
Another, briefer kiss, then Spock was bent in front of the tunnel and Jim was trying to catch his breath.  
  
“Do you think we can hide inside?”  
  
“Logically, the proconsul knows of this tunnel. If we hide inside, we’ll only be putting ourselves in the perfect place to be killed.”  
  
Jim’s jaw creaked as he ground his teeth. “But if he didn’t know, we could lay low. Hide until they stopped looking for us.”  
  
Spock met his gaze. “Captain, do we truly want to risk that?”  
  
“We’re both dead men, Mr. Spock. What are we truly risking?”

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do realize that Spock would've been very exact in how long the tunnel was, but I couldn't figure out how long I wanted it to be, so therefore I compromised with myself.  
> Let me live, thank you.


	3. iii.

 

* * *

In the end, they agreed the tunnel would be too risky to hide in.  
  
But that left them with nothing else. No other plans except Jim’s suicide mission of breaking the wine decanters and rushing at the two guards stationed outside. Unfortunately, his other attempts had been just as rushed and this one would, no doubt, end as those had. But Jim didn’t know what else to do. He turned a circle as Spock let the tapestry fall over the hole.  
  
“It’s late, Captain,” said the Vulcan.  
  
Jim only then noted the sag of his shoulders. The darkness under his eyes, and the dullness of his gaze.  
  
Spock didn’t sigh or yawn, but he might as well have. “We should get some sleep.”  
  
“I can’t—I won’t sleep!” Jim rubbed his hands together, trying and failing to come up with plan after plan.  
  
A _thunk_ , then another, made them both tense. Jim rounded on the door as his hand went to his hip. He grasped air, then moved to the table and grabbed one of the decanters. He spilled the wine on the floor and readied to use it as the door slowly swung open.  
  
Just enough to admit a head.  
  
“Captain!” A grin caught on Scotty’s pale, worn face and lit it up. “Was hoping I wasn’t lied to.”  
  
Jim’s hands curled around the glass, then he set it aside and was across the room, dragging Scotty inside, in an instant. “What’s going on? Lied to by who?”  
  
Here, his third-in-command went grave, eyes darting one way to another. They alighted on Spock and Scotty managed a grin and a nod before he met Jim’s eyes. “Merik. He’s…staging an escape. As far as I can tell, it’s legitimate, Captain. Gave us the tools and knowledge to do it.”  
  
“There is no logical reason for Captain Merik to help us. In fact, if this fails, it will hurt his standing considerably.”  
  
Jim met Spock’s gaze. “No, there isn’t,” he said. But his gut. It was telling him this was real. “Who’s us?”  
  
Scotty grinned again and opened the door. There stood Uhura and Christine Chapel, the two guards they’d knocked out were still unconscious and tied up against the wall. Uhura beamed at him tiredly, and Jim wanted so badly to stride forward and hug them both. He did nothing more than smile like a fool.  
  
“Captain, it could be a trap.” Spock was ramrod straight, jaw tight and eyes dark.  
  
“Guilt, Spock,” said Scotty, coming forward to clap the Vulcan on the shoulder. “He was once one of us, he remembers.”  
  
Jim didn’t like this either, but it was better than what he had. Which was straight up nothing. “Mr. Spock, you’re coming with us. That’s an order.”  
  
Spock tilted his head, his only sign of acceptance for this completely illogical course of action.  
  
Uhura touched his shoulder as Jim left the room with Spock in tow, and Christine looked away only briefly from where she was lookout. It wasn’t a warm greeting by any means, and Jim imagined she blamed him for McCoy. As she should.  
  
A long gash down Christine’s cheek had healed badly, and it tugged the left side of her mouth down.  
  
“Are you two—?”  
  
His communications officer nodded. “We’re fine, Captain. They had us in line for slave training. The nurse hit one of our guards when they got handsy—I helped.”  
  
She showed off the bandaged wound from shoulder to mid-forarm with pride, even as Jim’s stomach did a few somersaults.  
  
Scotty gave him a solemn nod before handing over dying phasers to him and Spock. They drug the two guards into the room just in case, and then Scotty lead the way through the passages. Jim only ever traversed the same ones, but even these new hallways looked the same as all the others. Alcoves filled with busts of past Magna Roma senators and counsuls. He wanted to knock over every single one they passed—especially the ones that looked like the proconsul.  
  
Spock was a constant, quiet presence and it took everything Jim had not to turned to him.  
  
Briefly, the Vulcan’s fingers pressed to his and electricity shot up Jim’s spine.  
  
The touch was gone as quickly as it happened.  
  
The feelings remained.  
  
Finally, Scotty stopped them all. “This is where it gets tricky, Captain. We’re near the treasury. Merik couldn’t clear the corridor because it’s so important, but this is the shortest way through to the hangar.”  
  
“Tell me exactly what’s going on, Scott.” Jim felt stupid he hadn’t asked the full plan before, but before there’d been the excitement and adrenaline and the promise of escape—the very thing he’d been arguing with Spock over.  
  
“There’s a ship, Captain. A simple thing that Merik managed to get landed down here and create a makeshift hangar for before they locked the occupants in with us.” Scotty saw Jim’s face—his horror at them stealing a ship, and shook his head. “They’ve already been aired in the fights, sir. All dead. The ship’s a small thing, but there’s enough supplies and fuel to get us to the nearest planet—Thoxemia. Earth-like atmosphere, kind inhabitants. From there, we can do whatever we feel like doing.”  
  
Jim trusted his gut, but it didn’t stop him from looking towards Spock for his opinion.  
  
“I—” Spock paused in a rare show of hesitancy, then he lifted his shoulder. “It is as good an escape plan as any, Captain.”  
  
“Certainly better than our other attempts,” he said with bitter humor. They’d be comical if only Jim hadn’t gotten Sulu and Winters killed. “Is there not another way to get to the hangar?”  
  
“Aye, there is. But it goes past the proconsul’s chambers.”  
  
They didn’t make their buildings very well, Jim fidgeted his hands together as he thought. “Is he just as well guarded as this?”  
  
“The conceited git has as many guards as you did.”  
  
“Really?” That actually surprised him a great deal. “And how many patrol through here?”  
  
Scotty looked away thoughtfully. “Four. We have enough phaser power to take them out, but that leaves us vulnerable later.”  
  
If there were unexpected guards, Scotty was right.  
  
Jim once again turned to his second-in-command. “What’s your opinion, Mr. Spock?”  
  
Indecision warred in those brown eyes of his, and Jim knew exactly the dilemma. He could feel the siren’s call to kill the proconsul like a second heartbeat. Spock wouldn’t want that, for Jim to bloody his hands—and especially risk their escape.  
  
“Logically—” Spock pressed his lips together, then forged on, blessing and condemning Jim in equal measure. “The logical decision is the path of least resistance, Captain. We should go past Proconsul Claudius’ chambers.”

* * *

 


	4. iv.

* * *

  
When they started again, this time Jim lead the way. Especially once they made it back to the doors of his room with Spock, Jim knew the way to the proconsul’s chambers from memory. He’d been there once—when he was with Drusilla—and since then he’d walked the path in his mind dozens upon dozens of times every day.  
  
The phaser at his hip was the weight of the world—the weight of his crew’s deaths. Proconsul Claudius Marcus had caused the death of over half his crew in the months they’d been there. He deserved nothing more than a torturous end—but could Jim be the one to give it to him? Would he do it? Every time he thought of McCoy, and Chekov, and Sulu, Jim was a hundred percent sure he could.  
  
But every time Spock’s fingers brushed his, he wasn’t so sure.  
  
They made it around the corner from the proconsul’s rooms and paused to take stock of the guards in front of the doors. As Scotty had said, there was only two. With the mostly dead phasers set to stun, the two went down surprisingly quiet. The first barely grunted, and the second only had a chance to turn his head.  
  
The voices of his dead crew began shouting at full force. _Kill him, Captain. Don’t let him get away with what was done to us.  
_  
Jim’s fists clenched as he made himself take step after step, Scotty one ahead and the others watching from behind. He could feel their eyes, but especially he could feel Spock’s. The clean, concise demands of _Don’t do it, Captain. It’s not worth it, Jim._  
  
He stumbled only once. Near the doors, his muscles taunt—he wanted to barge inside and use the last bit of his phaser’s energy.  
  
Spock eyes burned twin holes in his back.  
  
Jim marched forward.  
  
Once they made it to Thoxemia, he’d find a way to get real justice for his crew. He owned nothing else to those he’d lost than to make sure Claudius Marcus spent the rest of his life in the worst penal colony Jim knew of. Jim would be there when they sentenced him, and transported him down. Even thinking about it, this course of action didn’t seem like enough, but it had to be.  
  
None of his crew, especially McCoy, would want him to resort to murder.  
  
“We’re almost there, Captain,” Scotty said quietly. He motioned them towards the wall as he looked around. “A skeleton crew for this late at night. Two’re playing cards and three look dead asleep. I doubt the proconsul realized how valuable the ship could be—at least, he didn’t impress it upon his guards.”  
  
Jim’s lips pressed together. With someone as arrogant as Claudius, Jim imagined he did have some inkling of how valuable it was—but his arrogance made him think, after all of Jim’s attempts, that he’d won. Jim wouldn’t try yet again to get free, and certainly he wouldn’t know about this ship.  
  
If it wasn’t for Merik, then Jim wouldn’t have.  
  
They attacked quickly. The awake guards were fast as well, but Jim and the others were desperate.  
  
He punched one, who went down like a sack of bricks, and grappled with another.  
  
One tried to raise alarm, stumbling over his sleep-slow buddies, only for Spock to Vulcan-pinch him.  
  
Jim’s second opponent knocked him over, but Jim rolled out of the way. He kicked out and the man stumbled with a hoarse cry into another of his buddies. They went down together and between him, Spock, and Scotty they didn’t last long.  
  
Christine and Uhura stood over their unconscious guards with smirks at each other. Apparently they’d learned a thing or two wherever they had been kept. Which was saying something, because the two had never been women he underestimated.  
Scotty was on the small ship in seconds. Spock was behind him. They began calling out numbers and talking rapidly.  
  
Jim gratefully dove into the fray to help. It felt good to be in a ship again, even a small one. The controls were familiar and the sound as it’s engine’s was soothing, vibrating under his feet. It wasn’t the Enterprise, but the Daniel was their saving grace all the same. And Jim could—and would—always respect any ship he came across.  
  
Spock broke away from Scotty and gripped Jim’s arm to pull him aside. “Captain, the crew apparently decided to partake of the rations on board.”  
  
“Is there enough to get us to Thoxemia?”  
  
“Logically, yes. It’ll be a tight fit, however.”  
  
Jim slid his hands together as he looked towards the ship and his crew—the only ones they could take with them on a ship that small, though there were still hundreds of personnel left. He met Spock’s gaze. “Then we’ll go without, Spock. We can’t risk their lives. If it’s enough in any way, we’ll make do.”  
  
“Of course, Captain,” he said, and honestly the Vulcan looked relieved. “I can go without, of course. Vulcan biology being different from a human’s.”  
  
Here, Jim left a small pause for a ghostly McCoy to say something snarky. Then he smiled and clapped Spock on the shoulder; what he really wanted to do was kiss him. “Open the ceiling and let’s get out of here, Mr. Spock.”  
  
It took a while for the makeshift hangar to reveal the sky, and by then they were all stiff with impatience, humming with the energy to be gone. Jim bounced his leg as he checked, re-checked, and re-re-checked switches and screens. They were perfectly clear on fuel to get them to the course they’d set for Thoxemia.  
  
Then the door opened with a pressurized his and Jim went for the mostly dead phaser at his hip. At the very least it’d be a nasty surprise to whoever.  
  
Merik ducked his head in. “Did you think I told your crew about this ship and how to rescue you, without planning on coming along? There’s one seat left.”  
  
Jim had noticed that. He’d wanted to leave it as…well, a sort of terrible memoriam to the crew missing. Until he could do better, anyway. “We have a shortage of food thanks to the guards stationed here.”  
  
The other captain ducked inside holding more rations. “I didn’t come empty handed, Jim.”  
  
“Sit down.” Jim jerked his head towards the seat and turned back.  
  
The sky sparked before them, a thousand stars like diamonds in the sky.  
  
Once the door was shut and Merik was settled, Jim and Spock flicked switches and pressed buttons, and the craft rose into the air.  
  
They passed the Enterprise and Jim’s heart went to his poor vessel, marrooned with no crew. But he’d get her back. Just as he’d get justice for his crew—for McCoy, his best friend.  
  
Spock caught his eye after they’d passed and nodded, and Jim nodded back.  
  
After this, he’d get his ship, his justice, and his Vulcan.  
  
Of that, Jim was certain.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't remember if Vulcans need to eat as much as humans and my Google Fu is terrible. I took liberty with thinking they don't.
> 
> I've taken a lot of creative license with this little fic and the tiny ship taking them anywhere may or may not be the worst of it. 
> 
>  
> 
> Sorry.


	5. v.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the last quickly wrapped chapter.  
> Sorry if it's a little too quick.  
> I kept second guessing myself for this whole thing and just...had to finish it.
> 
> As always, I hope you enjoy.  
> And thank you so much for reading.

* * *

  
They made it to Thoxemia with barely any patience or food left, and were welcomed with open arms by the people there. Jim was more glad than he wanted to admit to put his feet on solid ground, eat actual food instead of rations, and sleep somewhere that wasn’t the back of a stupidly small ship on a small pallet that barely fit him. Whoever had the ship before—God rest their souls—must have been very small people.  
  
It’d been pretty apparent the Daniel wasn’t meant for such long treks and had been modified for it. Either way, Jim would appreciate the ship until he died.  
  
Especially since he was currently enjoying his first hot shower knowing he was free.  
  
It was unfortunate that he couldn’t enjoy it as he wanted to. Members of his crew were dead, and members of his crew were still on the list to die. He doubted the proconsul would stop the fights just because Jim was gone.  
  
In fact, he’d continue them just to torture Jim further.  
  
Jim turned the water off and stood there, dripping for a moment before finally stepping out. He was exhausted, half-asleep as he stared at himself in the mirror. They’d contacted Starfleet, and ships were already enroute to both Thoxemia and Magna Roma. He’d spent all his time after getting off the Daniel talking to one person after another, recounting his tales, and the death tolls and what the next courses of actions should be.  
  
Before long, Claudius Marcus would be on that penal colony—Jim had already set everything on motion.  
  
After haphazardly drying off, Jim threw his towel over his shoulder so he could go back into his room and about jumped out his skin in the doorway.  
  
“Captain.” Spock met his gaze.  
  
Jim hurriedly wrapped his towel around his waist, silently cursing. He highly doubted this was one of his reoccurring dreams come to life.  
  
They’d shared kisses, sure but…well, this was a pretty big leap from that.  
  
“Spock!” For a moment, that’s honestly all Jim had to say. He was far too flabberghasted to honestly formulate a sentence. Finally, however, he found the words. “What are you doing in here?”  
  
One eyebrow raised, Spock stood a little straighter. “It seems the Thoxemians’ gave us the same room, Captain.”  
  
Jim almost smiled. Instead, he only copied his companion and raised on eyebow. “Oh?”  
  
“Yes. It seems they’ve put Scotty and Merik together, and Uhura and Nurse Chapel in the same rooms as well. There’s a large delegation coming from the other side of the planet, and they need to conserve rooms.”  
  
Casually, he moved closer to the bed. He felt bad for Scotty, staying with the man that was partially to blame for all their problems. If he hadn’t been such a coward in the beginning, then maybe they’d have had a chance.  
  
But he wasn’t thinking about any of that.  
  
Instead, Jim watched as Spock’s muscles tightened the closer he got. Those dark brown eyes slid where they’d steadfastly been focused on his face, and Jim’s skin tingled in the wake of the path they took.  
  
“Spock,” he said, not surprised his voice came out rough. “Kiss me again.”  
  
And all of that considerable Vulcan control snapped. Jim saw it—just barely—before the Vulcan was on him. Hands gripped him, effortlessly pulled him closer, fingers dug bruises into his back. Jim groaned as he clutched at Spock, the feel of the alien’s warm hands on his slick skin about made him melt completely.  
  
Spock smoothed a hand down his back tenderly as he broke away, both of them panting. “Captain—”  
  
“No.” He ran his fingers over the sharp cheekbones and met his eyes. “No. I’ve got you. You can’t get away.”  
  
For a moment, there was indecision. Then Spock’s eyes danced as his expression softened. “Very well, Jim,” he said, and Jim’s towel went flying across the room.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fin.


End file.
